When the Mona Lisa came to Manhattan

In early 1963, after a stint at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Mona Lisa went on display at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Below, a shot of the line outside the Met snaking down Fifth Avenue to get into the exhibit.

Accompanied across the Atlantic by a flotilla of ships, the painting had never before left The Louvre, except when it was stolen in 1911 and whisked off to Italy for a few years.

More than a million people came to the Met to view it in person before it was brought back to France in a matter of weeks.